The door opened, but the two didn't rush out.
Fatty had been forced by circumstances before, to protect the delicate and weak (?), Tian Zhen, and to rescue the distant (lonely and helpless) Xiao Zhang. He could only reluctantly distance himself from those alluring coffins.
Now that the person was rescued and the door was open, his long-suppressed desires surged forward uncontrollably. It was as if he had seen a long-lost relative, and he pounced forward like a hungry tiger.
Wu Tian Zhen was still holding the slippery, oily arm. As he watched Fatty rummaging through the coffins, he felt a sense of guilt, like a victim witnessing a desecration of the dead.
"Fatty, do you have anything good in here?" he asked, watching Fatty pull out a black jade fragment. "It's all broken like this, and you're still keeping it. What's the use?"
"Tian Zhen, you're not doing it right. You're too capitalist, decadent, and indulgent!" Fatty said without looking back, immediately pinning a major charge on him. "Look how smooth the water is in this jade! Even if we don't sell it, it could be a nice tassel for Xiao Ge's sword hilt!"
"You don't know the cost of firewood and rice until you manage a household. Tian Zhen, you're becoming less thrifty and economical."
Wu Tian Zhen: ...?
Fatty became more animated as he spoke, adding countless inexplicable decorations to the unconscious Zhang Qiling, including but not limited to jade pendants, emerald thumb rings, cold iron finger hooks, and amber suspended pearls.
"Audacious! Presumptuous!" he exclaimed while rifling through the man's coffin, "Lord Zhang Clan Head himself is so pure and simple, so impoverished that he can only eat canned cilantro. How dare you be so extravagant and wasteful?!"
"I've confiscated it all for you!"
"Hurry up, Fatty..." Wu Tian Zhen felt that the arm he was holding, which had already been dead and gone, seemed unable to bear this bizarre humiliation and trembled slightly. He quickly interrupted Fatty, "Leave some room for others, and you'll meet again. There are still quite a few coffins here, don't anger them and have them join you later—"
Before he could finish, a gust of wind swept past.
Fatty, with his three hundred catties of fat, along with the pile of gold and silver treasures, and the limp Zhang Qiling, plunged towards the door, his face showing a hint of panic.
Slowly forming a question mark, Wu Tian Zhen belatedly realized that he had suddenly been left behind to share a harmonious world of yin and yang with the pile of coffins.
He cautiously looked back. The coffins also rumbled their lids and waved at him in a friendly manner.
Wu Tian Zhen: ...
—
The opened door seemed to have a time limit. A few minutes after Wu Tian Zhen, carrying the Black Gold Ancient Sword, passed through with difficulty, the two heard the familiar rumbling sound again. The door behind them twisted and moved in a vortex, returning to its original stone wall.
"To be honest, Fatty is already regretting not going back the way we came before the door closed," Fatty said, staring fixedly at the closing door, a conflicted expression gradually appearing on his face.
Under the beam of the flashlight, countless tiny silver lights flickered before them, along with black shadows hanging from them, looking like a bizarre spider's web cave.
...This was a maze of bronze bells.
"I remember this thing appearing in the Li King's forbidden land before..." Wu Tian Zhen had a deep impression of this. He had seen many Zhang Qilings who had bled themselves dry into mummies in the illusion, and for several days afterward, he had nightmares with material.
"The zoo director's stingy coffin last time only had one bell. I think our Xiao Ge's family business is eight hundred streets ahead of Li King's!" Fatty said, trying to make light of the situation and mockingly said, "This place is a wholesale dealer of bells. Even Yiwu Small Commodity City would have to bow down!"
"If we run into one of them here, it would be amazing. It would be like playing a funeral dirge on the spot, and we'd be carried away in one go."
Fatty was the type of person whose tongue became more fluent the more critical the situation. Before long, seeing the grand gathering of bronze bells, he was almost ready to perform with his practiced patter.
Wu Tian Zhen tried to interject several times but failed. In the end, he could only focus all his attention on observing the bronze formation.
"...I think the gaps between these thin threads are quite large. Why don't you, Fatty, try to challenge them with your superb ballet skills?"
"Damn it, do you think I don't want to?" Fatty directly shattered Wu Tian Zhen's beautiful fantasy. "With Fatty's graceful figure, let alone ballet, you could ask me to perform figure skating live, and it wouldn't be difficult."
Then Fatty took a step back, bent over, and precisely compared his waist circumference with the gaps: "...Then, with my ability, what can I do if these threads can't pass through my muscular body?"
"Even a clever cook can't cook without rice!!"
Wu Tian Zhen was stunned by Fatty's boastful self-praise. He didn't know whether to worry about the situation or to laugh loudly. But for some reason, his emotions suddenly turned to dejection.
...He suddenly realized that although Fatty couldn't pass because of his physique, he couldn't pass either because he was a weakling!
Who was superior, the fit weakling or the skilled Fatty, was a question worth pondering.
"This secret passage is not on the map at all, and I'm not sure how far we are from the outside," Wu Tian Zhen pondered for a long time. "If we just wait here for Xiao Hua and the others to finish the battle and come to rescue us, it's not impossible, but..."
"Mmm-hmm, yes, waiting for rescue," Fatty immediately chimed in, speaking carelessly. "What difference would it make if they came to rescue us? These bronze bells won't see that Hua Ye is good-looking and 'whoosh' disappear on their own!"
"Wouldn't it just be that instead of us two entering the illusion, everyone enters the illusion? It's like traveling a thousand miles to boost the performance of the bells here, it's not like sending heads to be taken."
These words made Wu Tian Zhen fall silent again. He thought for a long time, trying to find a perfect solution, but at that moment, his vision went black. Fatty stood up, and his shadow obscured his sight.
"Bang—Clack—"
A series of sounds rang out, interrupting Wu Tian Zhen's thoughts. He suddenly looked up and saw that a bell in front of him had shattered into pieces in an instant!
Fatty's gun barrel pointed straight ahead, and a faint wisp of white smoke emerged.
"If I shoot them all, won't they stop ringing?!"